OneBoard is a grass-roots, citizen initiative to dissolve Natchez City Government. It will result in eliminating 8 unnecessary City elected positions. Adams County will become a single unincorporated area governed by OneBoard, the Adams County Board of Supervisors (BOS), with a County Administrator (CA).
OneBoard is for all taxpayers who want increased quality and delivery of government services, a voice in land use plans, and pocketbook protection. For City taxpayers, it will over time reduce their taxes to the county rate. Our community simply has no more time or patience to listen as our public officials constantly bicker and fight about basic services such as crime and fire protection, recreation, garbage, and public works. We need OneBoard to handle those services, and the BOS can do the job and hire the hardworking city employees it will need to carry out the additional public work to be performed.
Since 1951, some 67 years ago, experts have recommended one unit/board of local government in Adams County. OneBoard will get us there through dissolution of City government. More than 40 years ago, research and development described hiring a CA as chief executive officer of the local government with OneBoard, the process of eliminating duplicate and unnecessary functions, and projected hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual cost savings. Other benefits described with OneBoard are equitable distribution of taxation and services, administrative professionalism, uniformity of planning and land development controls, and responsiveness to the public—each a goal of today’s OneBoard grass-roots effort. OneBoard is progressive and in keeping with communities that desire real planning and sustainability. OneBoard is about making this area business-friendly, respectful of fixed-income residents worried about bills and cost of living, preservation of core public assets, and divestment of unneeded public property back to the private sector. OneBoard is about genuine stewardship for this area, guided by fond memories of an active industrial area with jobs that at one time paid living wages. Most importantly, OneBoard recognizes the critical need to halt the exodus of residents under the age of 40 who are essential for a community’s sustainability and growth.
The one thing we can no longer do is to be passive. It is either fight, or flight. It is time for some soul-searching and a gut check. It is time to get “on board” for OneBoard.
The website www.OneBoardNatchezAdams.com has the petition to dissolve Natchez city government, along with information about bumper stickers, push cards, a documents repository (growing weekly), and other relevant information that will be continually updated and uploaded, as found. Visit the website often for alerts, updates, and newly posted resources, including links to other information you need to make informed decisions about the future of our area and to demand government accountability and transparency that are truly lacking under the current culture of secrecy, steering, incompetence, and waste that so defines the City.
